


Kaleidoscope Heart

by Zelos



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, IKEA Furniture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 10:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8664712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelos/pseuds/Zelos
Summary: “Last night, I helped a family assemble their IKEA table.”A missing moment between 1x17 and 1x18.





	

The scream was from an apartment building three miles out from the library. Someone had left the balcony door open and the voice—voices—pierced the night air like a beacon. Kara landed on the balcony before the echoes of the scream had fallen out of the air, and dashed right in. “It’s okay! I’m here! Are you—”

“ _Holy shit!_ ” A man bent over a pile of wood leapt back at her arrival, landing gracelessly on his backside. A screwdriver bounced off his foot before clattering to the wood pile. “Supergirl!”

“Ed!” Another man was by the kitchen sink, clearly reaching down to grab something—a first aid kit, Kara realized—before her entrance. Now he was staring at her with wide-eyed panic and looking like he was torn between running and throwing the kit at her.

This was not the warm welcome she would’ve received a week ago.

“I’m sorry,” Kara said hastily, backing her up with her hands raised. “I just—I heard you scream…” she trailed off as she noticed the trail of red running down Ed’s hand. “You’re hurt.”

Ed seemed to have gathered his wits and clambered to his feet again. He was a head taller than she was and took good advantage of it, glowering down at her. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. I just gouged my hand with a screwdriver, that’s all.” Despite his bravado, he took a wary step back from Kara, eyes never leaving her face. “Josh?”

“Here.” Josh pressed the first aid kit into Ed’s unbloodied hand. Josh’s hands looked oddly empty without the first aid kit, long, nervous fingers clenched tight into fists. Anxious.

“Oh,” Kara said brilliantly. She clamped down on the urge to retort _well you sure were screaming loudly_ ; spite wouldn’t help. Even if it did feel good. She took a deep breath and reined in her temper. “Do you need any help? Or medical attention?” She tried to keep the archness out of her voice on that last word, and mostly succeeded.

“No,” Ed said shortly.

“You sure? I can help.”

Ed snorted. “Help throw someone _off a roof_ , sure. Don’t think you know how to put a table together.”

Kara stiffened. Anger chased humiliation chased guilt. Her voice, when she found it, lost some of its brightness, the words forcibly steadied. “But you look like you’re having some trouble. Why not try me?”

Josh gave Ed a sidelong look. He looked to be the more reasonable of the two—or at least less sexist. Ed staunchly ignored him and scowled even harder.

“Maybe we should,” Josh finally said after a moment. At Ed’s affronted look he added, “hey, at least _she_ won’t gouge herself.”

The pair stared at each other in silent battle; Ed, for all his size and bluster, wilted first. With a disgusted huff, Ed slapped the screwdriver into Kara’s outstretched hand _far_ harder than was necessary. “Fine. Go nuts.”

 

Tables were not supposed to be complicated. A plank and four legs. Done. Simple.

This…was not a table. There were far too many legs and far too many pages of instructions. Wasn’t IKEA supposed to be the furniture store for the everyman and college students? How could the assembly instructions for a single IKEA table have _twenty-four_ whole pages?

Pictorial pages, sure. But still. _Twenty-four._ Kara wasn’t incompetent with household projects and fixing stuff; Jeremiah’s absence meant that Eliza, Alex, and she all had to step up to the plate. But then again, none of them had ever purchased a wooden spider masquerading as a dining table.

Ed was alternating between eying her with sexist condescension and picking at the bloodstains on his shirt sleeve. “Having some trouble?”

“Yeah,” she shot back, because Alex had taught her the best defense is a good offense. “Why are you trying to assemble a table with screwdrivers four sizes too small?”

Ed opened his mouth. Josh elbowed his partner and Ed subsided, glowering.

“We just moved in,” Josh explained with a glance the barren apartment. “And neither of us are handymen to begin with. These were the only ones we could find. In, ah, a closet.”

“So they’re not even yours?” Well, that explained it. Ed’s newest gouge seemed to be gouge #3 of the evening. Kara hoped they were deep. “Why not buy some?”

“You’re Supergirl,” Ed shot back snidely. “Try being _super._ ”

Being Supergirl did not mean she had any skill at assembling a wooden spider without help. Not that she’d admit that. “I can, but that’s the least of your problems.” Using the massive instructional sheet for cover, she palmed three random pieces of hardware with super-speed, pointing with her other hand at the parts list. “You’re missing this, and this, and that. Good luck assembling the table without them.”

“What?! I could’ve sworn—” Ed threw the paper over his shoulder and began scrounging on the floor, cursing. “I _counted_ the parts!”

“Take it up with IKEA,” Kara called over her shoulder, already on the balcony. “I’m going to get some proper tools.” She flew off without waiting for Ed’s indignant reply.

 

Alex would say “I am not a carpenter” and “I hate you” and help her anyway. Alex was also on the run, as was Hank.

Kara swallowed the lump in her throat and dialed Winn. Winn was the better candidate anyway. He could learn alien languages in a few hours and get (possibly haunted) printers to cooperate when no one else could. He’d been tinkering and fixing things with his father since—

Since—

It occurred to Kara that she was always asking Winn for things—covering for her at work, babysitting Carter, pulling off technological miracles, stitching up tears in her suit—and very rarely the reverse. After his father’s second attempt at mass-murder, Winn’d soldiered on with life with determined nonchalance, like everything was normal and none of it really mattered. She’d let him, because—because of all people, she was the worst person to tell him what to do.

Things were okay between them now. Maybe. Probably. She wasn’t really sure. Ever since the Red Kryptonite, Kara wasn’t sure where the line was anymore.

Was she taking advantage of him? Or was this Winn divorcing his talents from his father?

“—please leave a message, thanks!” chirped her earpiece, and she was almost relieved. She ended the call and did not leave a message.

Down below her in the suite, Ed and Josh were poring over the pile of hardware. Ed’s words were distinctly unprintable and sizzled the air in their passing, maligning IKEA (whom at IKEA was never specified)’s ancestry and ultimate destination after death. Kara floated for several minutes, just listening.

 _He actually hates someone more than he hates me._ Small comfort, that.

She tapped her earpiece again, then terminated the call. Again. And again. Tap, tap, tap-tap-tap- _dial tone_ —

“Supergirl?” Vasquez answered on the first ring, voice professional and mildly perplexed.

Kara squeaked.

“Supergirl?”

“Uh, yes.” Kara took a deep breath. “Is…is Director Lane there?”

There was a brief pause and a crackle as Vasquez put her on speaker, and then Lucy’s voice came through: “I’m here, Supergirl. What do you need?”

Kara winced. “Actually, Director, can I talk to you in private?”

 

“Kara? What’s going on?” Out of others’ earshot, Lucy’s voice was only marginally softer, clipped at the corners with alarm and professionalism. This was a soldier and a professional who got things done first and foremost.

Kara’s stomach churned. It’d only taken Lucy around thirty seconds to grab the line and go somewhere quiet, but in true super-speed fashion Kara had already envisioned about a hundred ways for this conversation to go, all of them horribly embarrassing. “I need some help. It’s, um, kind of embarrassing,” she might as well be honest, since everyone seemed to think she couldn’t lie worth a damn, “so I didn’t want others to hear.” She drew a deep breath, then blurted out, “I need your help with a table. A dining table.”

There was a pause. X-ray vision didn’t work through phone lines, but Kara could _see_ Lucy staring blankly into space, hand on her earpiece. “A table? Are you moving house?”

“No! I’m helping some people put together a table. As, um, Supergirl.” Lucy’s eyebrows were probably past her hairline by now. Kara rushed on, “look, I’m not assembling this as Kara. If I was doing this as myself then I’d just put the stupid table together. But I’m doing it as Supergirl. Not only am I helping them do it, I have to do it perfectly. All in one go, no mistakes, no pausing, no screws where they don’t belong. I have to _impress_ them. Otherwise there’d be no point. Supergirl can’t screw up on something as mundane as a _table_.”

“O…kay.” Lucy still sounded bewildered. Or skeptical. “But it’s a table. Plank and four legs.”

“Not this one. It’s…a weird table.” Maybe this was a mistake. She’d confessed her secret identity to Lucy, but did that make them friends by default, or just allies? Friendship was supposed to be an act of trust; hers had been desperation.

Lucy wasn’t really one of them—and that was Kara’s fault, not Lucy’s. Kara’d originally excluded Lucy out of a mixture of pragmatism and selfishness. She’d been secretly relieved when Lucy broke up with James. Kara wasn’t proud of that, and maybe it didn’t make a difference in the end, but it was true all the same.  Lucy was an ally, but Kara hadn’t given her many reasons to be a friend.

“I just need—” She didn’t know what she needed. A Youtube video?

“What’s the make and model?”

“Um...” Kara turned back to look at the apartment, narrowing her eyes to look through several layers of walls and ceilings until she found the box. “It’s an IKEA table. GAMLEBY Gateleg.”

There was a pause as Lucy looked up this table. “Huh. That’s some table.”

“Exactly!” Kara hissed back, three parts exasperation to one part triumphant relief. She might’ve waved her hands for emphasis. In mid-air, no one was around to see.

Lucy hummed under her breath as she looked over the diagrams. “You got screwdrivers? Or can you screw the pieces in by hand without breaking them?”

“No on the first. I…think so on the second. At least I hope so.” It was Kara’s turn to blink. “Wait, are you actually going to help me with this?”

“Isn’t that what you called me for?”

Well, yes, though Kara hadn’t thought too clearly on _how_ Lucy was going to help her. Winn could’ve _easily_ talked her through the assembly, but—sexist as it was—it didn’t occur to Kara that Lucy could do so too. “I…hoped. I hoped. I thought maybe…I mean, you’re busy, you’re a busy person, doing a lot of, um, busy things, and…” She was babbling now, voice squeaking up an octave. This was a _really_ lame request even if Lucy wasn’t the current Director of the CEO.

She didn’t actually know what she would do if Lucy said no.

Lucy sounded like she was resisting a smile. “Other duties as assigned,” Lucy said, and Kara wasn’t sure if Lucy was referring to herself or Supergirl. “Now, are you okay with verbal instructions, or do you need to come back to the DEO so I can give you a video feed?”

 

“That took you a while,” Ed said skeptically as Kara touched down on the balcony.

“Home Depot was closed.” Kara shrugged, twirling Lucy’s screwdrivers idly (“you might as well take them since you’re here,” Lucy had said). “I took a detour. Did you find your missing parts?”

“No.” Ed jabbed a thumb at Josh in the background, talking on the phone. “Josh is taking it up with IKEA. Said I shouted too loudly.”

“Let me look around.” She dashed around the apartment with super-speed, and screeched to a halt with her stolen parts—which had never left her person—in hand. “Found them!”

Josh looked up from his call. Ed gave Kara a deeply suspicious look from behind his glasses.

“I would’ve hit his face with the cape,” Lucy commented dryly in Kara’s ear. “It’s weighted, right, so it won’t fly into your face?”

Kara valiantly muffled a giggle and beamed at Josh instead. “So, can I help with the table?”

“I’m sorry. Yes, we found it. Yes. No, it was under…something. I’m very sorry for the trouble. You have a good night too.” Josh hung up the phone with an air of long-suffering exasperation directed at his partner. “Seriously, Ed? You just yelled at that poor woman for how long for parts you dropped on the carpet?”

“I did not!” Ed protested, his unkempt brown hair quivering in indignation. “I checked. You saw me. I _checked._ ”

“Let’s get to work,” Kara interrupted brightly, before Josh and Ed could think too hard about how the hardware disappeared. She carefully spread out the instruction sheet on the vacated floor beside the piles of wooden pieces, then arranged all the hardware into neat piles beside it. She kept her movements slow and deliberate, making sure Lucy got a good look through the lapel pin’s hidden camera. If Josh or Ed noticed the new addition to her costume, they didn’t comment. “We’re good?”

“We’re good,” Lucy confirmed. “Let’s go, Supergirl.”

 

“I sorta assumed super-speed goes with the whole Supergirl thing.” Josh was giving her the side-eye.

“Um.” Kara was going at normal human speed because Lucy was giving her instructions in her earpiece. But she couldn’t _say_ that.

Lucy didn’t miss a beat. “Tell him the excess friction and heat from super-speed will kill the table.”

Kara repeated the words. She hoped her parroting mimicked Lucy’s confident disdain.

Now Ed raised an eyebrow. “What, you think the table will melt?”

“It’s IKEA,” Lucy shot back. “They’re usually held together by wood glue and wishful thinking.”

Josh frowned. “But this table is actual wood. Solid pine. Not that particleboard crap.” He rapped the nearest piece with his knuckles. “That’s the reason we chose this model.”

“Look, _I_ _’m_ the one with the x-ray vision here,” Kara managed to retort.

“If it _were_ solid pine,” Lucy added archly in the earpiece, “they wouldn’t be getting it for $300 on sale.”

They didn’t question her human-esque speed after that.

 

“Okay, pop the small wooden dowels into the centre holes of the square bracket you just assembled. Small dowels, not the big ones. They’re on your right. Lightly, _lightly_ , tap them in.”

“Lightly tap them in. Lightly tap them in,” Kara muttered to herself. She pushed the dowels in; one creaked in distress. She winced.

“I didn’t think superheroes talked to themselves,” Ed said. He sounded a little less belligerent now, more curious.

“I thought that was a pretty human thing to do,” Kara answered without looking at him. She tugged gently at the abused dowel.

“Human, yes. But you’re not human.”

“Does that make you feel better or worse?”

“I’m not sure,” Ed answered after a moment. “But I’m pretty sure that dowel is stuck.”

 

“Do you need any help?” Josh, Kara decided, was the far more reasonable of the two.

“No,” Lucy said immediately.

“No,” Kara repeated, but she smiled. “It’s easier to do by myself.”

Lucy snorted. “Liar.”

Kara ignored her. “The instructions are drawn in one perspective. Two people makes it harder because we’re not looking at the table assembly from the same angle. But I’d appreciate help when we start turning it over.”

Josh looked taken aback at the notion of _Supergirl_ needing _help_ at _turning things over_. He shrugged, like he decided it wasn’t worth arguing. “You actually look at the instructions.”

“Well, yeah. Furniture assembly isn’t on my resume.” She decided to have a little fun, and tilted her head. “What, don’t humans look at instructions?”

Josh actually chuckled. “Less often than you think.”

“You wrote them. General you,” Kara clarified. “Not you you.”

“We’re dumb.” Ed has a sardonic smile on his face. But it was a smile. She’d take it. “What _is_ on your resume?”

“Um. Herding cats?” Kara reached for another dowel. “Cat. Singular.”

The pair exchanged a look. “Didn’t take you for a pet person.”

Kara shrugged and smiled. “She grows on you.”

 

“So, what do you do when you’re not…” Josh mimed a whooshing motion with one hand. “Super-ing?”

Kara stayed silent.

“Ah,” Josh said after a moment. “Professional secret.”

“Sorry,” Kara said. _Not sorry_. “Comes with the, uh, cape.”

“Okay.” Josh tilted his head. “What else is on your resume?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’m trying to make conversation.” Josh shrugged. “Would you rather we stare at you in silence? Or leave and let you work alone on a table that isn’t yours, in a flat that’s not yours, for people you don’t even know?”

Kara wracked her brain for innocuous job duties. “I do, um, normal stuff. Pick up coffee, pick up laundry, answer the phone.” She tried to laugh. “I’m pretty boring. I do all the same stuff you people do: eat, sleep, go out, punch things—” her hand slipped “—like, as practice! Like a workout. Practice.” She gestured vaguely with the screwdriver and tried not to look at the hole she just gouged in the questionably-solid pine. “Boxing and stuff.”

“Kara.” Lucy’s voice was soft.

Kara drew a breath. “You people go to, like, the gym?” Her voice pitched high in the silence, hung like lead in the air. “Right?”

Josh spoke first. “Why do _you_ , of all people, need practice punching people?”

“Didn’t you throw someone off a building last week?” Ed added. There was a definite edge in his voice that hadn’t been there a few moments ago.

“That was—” Kara dropped the screwdriver entirely; it clattered to the floor. She couldn’t meet their eyes. “An accident.” Her voice cracked a little. “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t change anything, but…” Adam and Cat’s conversation from weeks back came back to her, and she bit her lip. “No buts. Just…sorry.”

“Is that why you’re…” Josh gestured at the mostly-finished table.

Kara managed a weak smile. “Is it working?”

Ed blinked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “You’re an alien.”

“Yeah.” She wondered if _alien_ would ever stop hurting. “Doesn’t mean I want to be.”

Ed looked just south of aghast. “You don’t want to be—be—” he faltered, as if he couldn’t form the words.

“No, I mean—I don’t want to be an alien _to you_. I can be me, but not an alien to you. To humans.” Kara’s voice turned plaintive. “Can’t I?” A beat of silence. “Can’t we?”

A very long silence.

Kara felt like she’d been punched. She turned back to the table and went the rest of the way with super-speed, Lucy’s charade be damned.

They didn’t comment when she broke the Allen key. Maybe they didn’t even notice when it took her three tries to screw in the levelling feet. And if there were a few extra holes along the way…well.

Kara took a deep breath and blinked back damp in her eyes. “Josh,” she said, “can you help me turn the table?”

 

“Kara, are you okay?”

“Uh huh. One IKEA table, fully assembled.” Her voice was dull.

The men had said thank you, all polite and cordial and closed like shutters. Kara’d flown off, trying not to look at their faces. Now she was hovering half a mile above their building, watching them mill about their new table and unpacking their boxes.

Kara tightened her mouth, trying not to cry. Lucy would hear her if she cried. “Thanks, for…for the help.”

Thankfully, Lucy didn’t press the point. Didn’t offer support, no _sorry they didn_ _’t turn around_. Kara didn’t think she could handle it from Alex at this point, never mind Lucy. “You’re welcome. Come give me back my camera so I can go home. If you’re not here in five minutes, I am going to be completely honest on the paperwork, and you do not want me to write ‘IKEA table’ as the sign-out reason.”

Kara cracked a smile. The threat reminded her of Alex a little, and she was grateful for the distraction. “To be honest, I didn’t think you could help me.” The words tumbled out, a little emotional, a little thoughtless. “Winn, yes. You, I didn’t expect. Is that sexist? That’s sexist, isn’t it?”

“Kara, I didn’t get to where I am because of _Daddy._ ” The words were crisp and cutting and a little too defensive. Kara knew better than anyone the value of family connections. “My stint at Catco aside, I am a _Major_ in the United States Army, and those medals on my chest aren’t for show. I’ve seen a lot more complicated schematics than IKEA. I may not be able to fix a tank, but I’ve been in one. A dining table? _Please._ ”

Kara drew in a stinging breath. “Sorry.”

Lucy paused. When she spoke again, her voice was much gentler. “It’s okay. Can I ask you a question?”

Kara squeezed her eyes shut. “Shoot.”

“Why did you call me, instead of anyone else? Why not James?”

 _I didn_ _’t want James._ The words died on her tongue; she knew better than to say it. So many ways it could be interpreted, none of which she meant.

_“You’re going to help me do this, right?”_

Between her experience and educational pedigree, Lucy had always seemed untouchable. She was yet another woman who had succeeded in a man’s world, and she wore her station like armour. Everything about her screamed perfection, restraint, invulnerability, achievement, from the cut of her designer blouse to the creases of her uniform.

But she wasn’t. Lucy’d bared her insecurities to Kara long before Kara returned the favour—and even when Kara did, it’d been more for Alex and Hank’s sakes than for herself. Kara trusted Lucy, but she didn’t confide in her.

Sometimes friendship meant being vulnerable. Ironic, given who she was. But appropriate. That was how her friendship with Winn started. James and her. And now, Lucy.

“You said I got you to trust me,” Kara said finally. “I thought…maybe it’s about time I trusted you. As a choice, not a last resort.” She hugged her arms around herself, glad Lucy couldn’t see.

Lucy was quiet for a moment. “I’m not a hero,” she replied, non-sequitur that wasn’t.

“Yes, you are,” Kara corrected, and thought painfully of Alex. Thought of Winn with being choked by Indigo, and James running toward Reactron. “Superheroes aren’t the only heroes.” She thought of how Cat looked after she’d dropped her, skin dark with bruises and eyes dark with fear, and it hurt like a knife to the chest. “Braver when you aren’t. Super, I mean.”

“Super just means you face more things up close,” Lucy countered. “From aliens, to the people you’ve failed. That’s braver than anything I’ve ever done.”

Kara thought of Ed, and his sardonic, lopsided smile. Josh, making conversation. The way the men froze when _punch_ slipped out. The taut expressions, the sidelong stares. She hadn’t been brave enough to eavesdrop on them since she left.

“Thanks Lucy,” she said instead. The words held a strange weight that didn’t feel heavy. “I don’t have a lot of friends.”

She could hear Lucy smile. “I guess you have one more.”

**Author's Note:**

> I made timeline assumptions based on the characters' outfits, so Winn was busy with Siobhan the night of the IKEA table debacle. :) The [GAMLEBY](http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/60247027/) table mentioned here was the most complicated one I could find (without being an office desk with extra drawers or some such).
> 
> Lucy did a really abrupt about-face in 1x17, at great personal risk, because she chose to trust Kara. I always thought that change of heart needed to be explored more. Alex is my favourite by far, but Winn and Lucy are the ones I want to write about. (I also thought it was deplorable security to not have cameras by the DEO cells, but I suppose that gives me room to write Lucy talking with Hank/J'onn.)
> 
> I originally wanted to make this fluffier because Kara is such a ray of sunshine, but canonically the Winning Back National City campaign didn't resolve until 1x18, so I kept Kara a little sadder in line with her struggles in the show.


End file.
